Double Time
Deer sniff red November
berries of heavenly bamboo in my windy
yard. A woman’s bathing suit in the street
where police left it.
(A man, tosses a dim shape high over car hood. I watched it. But before that, he is tugging
Something from the backseat to jam into an old steamer-trunk at curbside. Nose-first,
Then swinging half-in to park under the streetlight. Trunk opened, his motor running
When me and my cat come across him at 4:00 a.m. from my dark bedroom window.
I am watching. See me.)
*
Not for a moment does a man ‘s voice at the call-desk believe me—nor will
he venture inside my home after daylight to hear the whole story. “Probably
a garbage truck, all that noise scared her,” the sleepy, over-the-shoulder garble
I hear as the call drops.
(Deer aren’t the least bit judgmental about a man pulling a load off his backseat, or what
This task might imply near sun-up. I am trapped as I come across this figure
Inside me—him and his great heft off the backseat. Getting closer he is with each
Pull, only to dwell in me. . . for years on his knees in the gutter by that backseat door
Then with big Umph, he’s up and over his bumper, until my vision’s finely glued on this
Former-fool-of-a-man staggering across his trunk floor, then back up, and down again—
Desperate for balance. And me, breathing in time with his legs buckling. His
Secret other weighs on him ever so clumsily.)
*
Next few days, police take it slowly—until the right answer comes for what’s
needed—nothing less than a streetlight replacement with a high intensity
crime-light. . . A fully-grown uniformed man waved that official blue
paper at me days later in the sun.
(So, oh yes, of course, and please do let there be more, shining light Or at least concrete
And wattage enough to keep us alive another season. Me and the cat.
Not to mention that bundle dragged from his backseat: all of us ready to be
Reported as a Neighborhood Mishap. Spry-footed deer don’t care.
They’re hungry animals, and seemingly tenseless
As we humans are not.
Again, I’m here and in no big hurry—this
Killer is captive, and won’t leave me anytime soon: His car still thrust at an angle
To the curb. It’s owner squarely lit and now wandering his trunk.
He’s crashes in and out and around in it. And is completely mindless, that man is.
Take note, I am witnessing something awful, for what seems an awful long time.
Lit things tilt at an angle, and root in the dark.
This guy never thought of what comes next, or who did what to whom
When nobody’s here to see what he’s doing
*
Dim and crow-like—the man flings this up over his car.
Later I dream a dead star is clamped in its beak. Poor wings of creation.
Ever-smudge on the foiled wind.
*
Common street-snicker: “females just disappear after dark by the river. . .
another one of them loose without clothes. Even more of them,
come summer.”
Who thought up such quaint aquatic horror?
What sort of ex-boyfriend/loverman turns any woman to a rotten piece
of lore? And, dear policeman, what had your make-believe garbage-truck
got to do with any of this?
I write down this line-up: me and the cat who switches his tail
And means it, hissing loudly—Nobody but me can be sure what this
sounds like in the dark
ITEMIZED FACTS:
- Male hurls the last of his terror over the car-hood, and speeds away from my house.
- I pick up what-it-is at dawn from the asphalt—one swim suit. Damp. And empty.
- I am the ultimate (unknown) pair of eyes. I own this story. It is mine.
- What I saw I spoke aloud.
- And to the right people.
God only knows what goes on by the river,
and probably won’t tell.
*
Rivers are cold and anonymous in the mountains. Such arrangements
should shake you . . .
Shock too my unauthorized version of that morning
squad-car driving in slow circles around an empty suit on my dead-end
street.
The police noisily go in circles.
Time noted. Nobody returns.
Vigilantes
Later that man I’ve been speaking of remembered he’d forgotten
one last thing there on his backseat which I watched I him hurl over
the hood of his car. I found it in the street near dawn. I named it woman’s
black bathing suit on the asphalt as thoughts twirled blizzards. Empty that suit
was as ever, and damp with the river. I held it and named it as sun broke
over the mountains. That daylit thing was christened with the words
that I offered. What I still see is the way this wet mystery flew fast
on its way to cutting loose from life on this planet—
except for me finding it fallen back to the street before sun-up. I walked up
to see Empty-Thing laying there. Hole in the night there where it lived
for a while without me. It’s tunnel home. After words make a sentence,
facts can go shaky. I know because a swatch of black flew around, and the night
was not stormy. I watched these facts happen then falter—smear of arc of air.
Once there was a time when my cat and I seemingly partnered as vigilantes
making made wild sounds at the window, shielding ourselves from this world.
